Yeah, including or perhaps tied with Vesperia, Lost Odyssey was easily the best of all those JRPGs from Microsoft's short-lived "let's try to get a foothold in Japan" phase with the 360. (lol "Infinite Undiscovery")

It's available digitally on the Xbox One these days, apparently, which I wish meant it had Windows 10 crossplay functionality, but nah, it ain't no Forza or whatever, so of course not.

Yep, it was a Mistwalker joint, headlined by Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nobou Uematsu on the soundtrack, which turned out to be one of his best in ages up to that point. Some former Final Fantasy artist was also onboard, but just for costume design? Everyone in Lost Odyssey is dressed like a total fuckin' goon so I guess that's why.

They also had a pretty legit Japanese author on the team to write all those Thousand Years of Dreams stories, which I thought were extremely good. That concept has never returned and it's a real shame.

I have no idea what Mistwalker has been up to since then, if anything. Chances are the studio might be long gone or fallen into a gacha hole. They put out something else before Lost Odyssey with much more of a Dragon Quest vibe but I don't remember what it was called.

Speaking of Vesperia, I got an email from Amazon (since I pre-ordered it) saying it's delayed by the publisher until January 11th. That's a Friday, so I don't think that'll even be the final US release date, but I'm not mad about it. Now it's a paycheck or 2 after Christmas, and it's not a week apart from the Persona dance games now, assuming those don't also get delayed.

...I usually take "in development" to mean "we've optioned the rights and may or may not actually put a series in production someday if we feel like it" but this one already looks farther along than most.

Alan Wake was a pretty direct take on Twin Peaks and a few other shows, so makes sense that it would become a TV show itself eventually. Like Twin Peaks, it even had a fake TV show inside the game... a fake show in a game inspired by TV shows which will soon become an actual TV show... try not to think too hard about these recursive loops or you might get stuck there for days.

So it is actually coming out on a Friday... I'm so used to Tuesday releases that I thought the delay was inaccurate (in that the delay was definitely happening, but not actually coming out on that exact date).

...some of the details regarding Online are a tad rough, mostly the paywalled cloud save stuff. Pricing is better than PS+/Gold, at least. Plus those NES controllers are pretty great... even if they look super weird when docked.

Those Pokemon-styled Switch consoles look pretty swank. I don't really need more Diablo 3 in my life but this port is looking solid. I'm glad Super Mario Party exists if only for the inevitable Giant Bomb #content. TOWN (WORKING TITLE.) Heh. Cities Skylines on Switch feels like an odd fit, UI/UX-wise at least, and also makes me want Nintendo-themed additions a la the SNES version of Sim City. Daemon X Machina still looks/sounds great. Yoshi's new game looks like a better Little Big Planet.

This tabletop app could be really cool if the expansion pricing for new games isn't too crazy. 4-player local multiplayer for a game like Civ 6 sounds like a total mess. I wonder if Star Fox might actually be in danger of being upstaged by the other space shooters on the way for Switch. Warframe is a good get. I still haven't played FFXV, so I wonder how weird it would be to go in with Pocket Edition instead of the OG. Final Fantasy VII, IX, X/X-2, and XII (RIP VIII I guess!)

I'm not a Smash guy, though I appreciate its existence as the big-ass Nintendo & Friends compilation project it's become over the years and especially this time around. That said the Isabelle reveal is hilarious. I always love a good goofy Smash character bit going all the way back to Snake.

but who cares about that noise 'cause FUCK YEAH NEW ANIMAL CROSSING IN 2019